Space 1979: The one where the world ends at Christmas

 

Title: Night of the Comet

What Year?: 1984

Classification: Mashup/ Runnerup

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

When I got around to a breakdown of this feature so far, one thing that caught me totally off-guard was that I have really done very little for the early to mid 1980s, especially 1982 to 1985. I could find some explanation for this. There were a lot of movies that were too successful in their own right to fit in here, like E.T., Blade Runner and The Thing from ’82 alone. There were others that I decided were better covered elsewhere, notably Lifeforce and Creature from 1985. But there were also a number of movies I had considered and even viewed, but never got around to reviewing. This is a review for one of those movies, and it’s only fitting that I’m finally getting to it just before the week of Christmas. With that, I introduce Night of the Comet.

Our story begins with a view of outer space and a comet approaching Earth, which a narrator intones has not been seen since the day of the dinosaurs. We then meet a young lady named Reg and her sister Sam, who are debating whether to stay up for a party to view the comet. In the process, we learn that it is a week or so before Christmas. In the end, Reg spends the night in seclusion with her boyfriend. When they wake up, they discover nobody is answering the phone. When the guy steps outside, he is attacked by a milky-eyed mutant, who is swift and stealthy enough that it’s over without Reg knowing what happens. Reg spends some time playing a video game she has set every high score for before she ventures out and finds the streets deserted, aside from drifts of ominous red powder. By the time she finally meets up with Sam, she is convinced that the vast majority of the human race has been reduced to literal dust by some unexplained effect of the comet. The only survivors to be found are the roving mutants, a lone truck driver, and a patrol from an outlying military outpost. The sisters must figure out who to trust, but first, they’re going to the mall!

Night of the Comet was the most successful and arguably most “mainstream” film by writer/ director Thom Eberhardt, previously featured in my original Revenant Review for the zombie/ cosmic terror film Sole Survivor. Both films are set at Christmas, though the holiday setting is far more developed in Night. He reportedly based the movie on earlier post-apocalyptic films including Dawn of the Dead, with further input from teenagers he met while filming other projects. The movie was financed by Atlantic Releasing Corporation, with a budget estimated as either $3 million or $700,000. The cast included a number of cult/ B movie personalities, including Catherine Marie Stewart of TheLast Starfighter as Reg, Kelli Maroney of Chopping Mall as Sam, and Mary Woronov of Terrorvision, Deathrace 2000, etc. as a scientist among the military types who appear in the final act. The movie made a US box office of over $14M, and was released on VHS in 1985. It has remained available on home media up to the present day, ensuring its enduring status as a “cult” film.

This is one of quite a few movies featured here that I heard of well before I saw it, and still took quite a bit longer to buy. It’s a film I never disliked but have never been able to approach outside the shadow of other films. It’s nowhere near as creepy as Sole Survivor, it doesn’t have as much humor or action as Dawn of the Dead, and it doesn’t have the less definable manic energy of the Mad Max series. Even compared to Chopping Mall, it has its hits and misses. The acting and dialogue (including from Maroney) are better, but the latter movie has a tighter story and is far more effective in developing the possibilities of the mall environment. What Night of the Comet mostly stands out for is its late use of what I think of as the “tidy apocalypse”, a dramatic conceit of much earlier science fiction where human civilization and most of the populace instantly disappear without the collateral damage of bodies, ruined buildings, fallout and toxic waste. For that matter, the idea also turned up in The Quiet Earth the following year, and that movie at least built up to a kind of explanation.

All the relative strengths of Night of the Comet lie in the story and character development, and it’s certainly enough to keep the movie entertaining. Things get off to a good start with Stewart’s early scenes playing her favorite video game (clearly Tempest); she looks so intense yet focused it’s either comical or terrifying. It’s all the more intriguing that her turn in The Last Starfighter was the same year. Sam proves less driven yet seemingly quicker to adapt, going from disbelief to giddy symbolic rebellion in a matter of a few scenes. Her high point is a scene at the controls of an otherwise automated radio station, happily sending holiday cheer into oblivion. The production gets a late shot in the arm from Woronov, at first friendly, then increasingly menacing, and finally frank as she reveals the plans of her cohorts.

Meanwhile, the movie sets up a post-apocalyptic environment in which the human characters are suitably dwarfed. Again, there is a strong start with imagery of the sleek cityscape (including several shots I could swear are some kind of CGI) both before and after the comet’s arrival, made only somewhat more eerie and lifeless by the red skies and drifting dust that follow the departure of humanity. It is the mutants, casually referred to as “zombies” at several points, that start to unravel the fine worldbuilding. Their appearance is suitably grim, but by now stereotypical. The evident behavior is much more interesting. They are clearly intelligent, able to use weapons, move in groups and communicate both with humans and each other. This is all the more impressive given that we only see them in a very few scenes. However, they do more to break the mood of earlier scenes than build on it. The big set piece scenes with a pack in the mall would be a credit to any other movie, complete with a clever twist on the human-shield scenario. Here, however, they turn an eerie movie into a merely entertaining one. In my further assessment, the horror and satirical possibilities of the zombie genre were better explored with the no-tech revenants of Sole Survivor, who blend in all too well with the superficial holiday cheer of the living.

That brings us to the “one scene”, and I’m going to give a cold account of something that would be a bit more spread out. As the finale draws near, the story follows Reg back to a military compound, where we meet the colleagues of the previously encountered doctor as well as two children they have detained. There’s an impressive rogue’s gallery of characters, but the ones that stand out to me are a pair of interchangeable female lab assistants. We get a sense of their character from one who nonchalantly discusses the fate of their subjects, and then adds, “I love working with children.” We then follow them into an interview to the children. They assure the kids they won’t have to get a “shot”, but the little ones become suspicious when they offer gas instead. One of the assistants says matter-of-factly, “It will send you to live with Santa Claus… forever.” The boy promptly declares there is no Santa, upsetting the assistants and the girl. They still manage to stay in control until Reg bursts in. Skip forward, and the edgy commander finds them “off to visit Santa”, then promptly orders the rest of the crew to leave them to their fate.

In my final assessment, this is a film I’ve grown to appreciate far more over time. It falls into a non-trivial category of big-budget “mainstream” productions from filmmakers who built their reputation as low-budget auteurs. In that context, it’s downright refreshing, even if it’s not up to par with the creator’s earlier work (if you can find it…) By any standard, it’s a smart movie that does something with its budget, and that’s a milestone in itself for a time when far too many genre films were getting more money at the expense of far greater studio interference. On top of that, it’s at least as good as Die Hard for an unconventional “holiday” movie. So deck the halls and pass the ammunition, because Santa already left town.

Image credit Night of the Comet Wordpress blog.